Residents addressing crime, safety issues

East Village resident Connie Ellis was hit in the face by a homeless man last week at 13th and Market streets as she was walking back from a planning meeting for a forum on community safety. (Sean M. Haffey / Union-Tribune)

East Village resident Connie Ellis was hit in the face by a homeless man last week at 13th and Market streets as she was walking back from a planning meeting for a forum on community safety. (Sean M. Haffey / Union-Tribune)

East Village resident Connie Ellis was hit in the face by a homeless man last week at 13th and Market streets as she was walking back from a planning meeting for a forum on community safety. (Sean M. Haffey / Union-Tribune)

DETAILS

Homelessness and crime are rampant in downtown's East Village, and those complex ills recently hit resident Connie Ellis right in the face. Literally.

“I was walking down Market Street when this guy, who was walking toward me and talking to himself, hit me in the face and kept on walking,” said Ellis, a real estate broker and East Village renter. “I was shaking for the rest of the day. If he would have had a knife, he could have stabbed me.”

She called police, who arrived after the assailant had left the area.

Ellis, 32, finds a bitter irony in the incident because she had just left a planning meeting for a forum on community safety in the East Village.

That forum will be held tomorrow at Petco Park auditorium. City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, who represents downtown, will meet with residents, business people and others to discuss the issues that are disturbing the emerging urban neighborhood.

Chronic drug use and sales, public drunkenness, aggressive panhandling, loitering and other safety concerns are among the issues on the agenda of the meeting, sponsored by the East Village Community Action Network.

“We feel the East Village is a good neighborhood,” said Caryl Iseman, a network member who owns property there. “The question is, how do we make it safe?”

For decades, the East Village was a collection of warehouses, commercial buildings and social service agencies that were busy during the day but shuttered at night. After dark, those blocks – stretching east of the Gaslamp Quarter to Interstate 5 – became home to the homeless, who bedded down there until morning rush hour.

Some of that changed with the construction this decade of Petco Park, which served as a catalyst for condominiums, hotels, apartments, restaurants and other businesses. The momentum pushed homelessness toward the eastern fringe of downtown.

But the wave of development, which has stalled in the economic downturn, did not solve the homelessness problems that now face the new residents and entrepreneurs.

Iseman said she hopes the forum will be a starting point to galvanize the community to take action. She believes the area needs “more eyes on the streets” through a Neighborhood Watch program, better security around Metropolitan Transit System stops and increased police enforcement.

She said the neighborhood should be a place where people feel free to walk to the store, but it's not.

“There's so much panhandling that people don't want to be bothered,” Iseman said.

The Police Department is barraged with phone calls and e-mails every day with complaints about homelessness in the East Village, said Capt. Christopher Ball of the department's Central Division. He said residents are fed up with the tents, shopping carts, public urination and drug dealing that they see outside their doors.

Because of a 2007 court settlement, the city agreed to stop ticketing homeless people for sleeping on the streets. Ball said the department focuses on fighting crime in the East Village and elsewhere in the division, which includes Balboa Park, Little Italy, downtown and Barrio Logan.

Enforcing the law is only one element in making the East Village more livable. Ball said housing, jobs, mental health treatment and alcohol and drug rehabilitation are also needed, and in short supply. And those living on the streets must be willing to accept help if offered.

“All these little pieces can add up over time,” Ball said. “But nothing will happen overnight.”

Faulconer said he wants to work with the neighborhood residents and business people on improvements.

“We have to address these issues – not run away from them,” he said.

Next month, the city will begin reviewing proposals from social service agencies for a downtown homeless assistance center that would provide housing and other services to help get more people off the streets. Although $10 million from the city's downtown redevelopment arm is already in hand, construction of the facility is likely years away.

Ellis said the East Village cannot afford to wait to start working on solutions. She has already become involved, helping supply Christmas gifts to the homeless children who attend downtown's Monarch School.

She moved to the urban community more than a year ago after growing up in suburban Sacramento and, most recently, residing at a vineyard and ranch in bucolic Napa. Despite the problems, she wants to help the East Village become safer, and she wants to stick it out.

“You have to do something,” Ellis said. “Doing nothing at all isn't the answer.”